Governing Asia

Beijing, who were good at mobilizing government resources and never had a deep trust and understanding of market forces, quickly resorted to issuing administrative orders to local governments requiring them to guarantee at least 8 percent annual GDP growth within their region — or simply baoba in Chinese. Baoba ushered in the statist model of development in China characterized by “investment hunger”.
Four underlying principles are implicit in baoba: (1) government at all levels, not market forces, should be responsible for economic growth; (2) resources, including fiscal and financial resources, should be reserved for governments to generate growth; (3) state-owned enterprises, which are closely linked with central and local governments, are important partners in baoba and should be given privileges or preferential treatment; and (4) local governments should guarantee economic growth even if economic, social, and environmental costs are high. Indeed, post-1998 China has followed these four principles closely in its economic expansion (Rents and Rent Seeking in China 2014). Currently, China’s macroeconomic management is still preoccupied with the pro-growth priority, and the financial system is centred around this preoccupation and serving to mobilize resources, fiscal or extra-fiscal, for governments at various levels to produce GDP growth.

appears that all Chinese leaders are afraid of economic slowdowns — even if the slowdowns are for a short period of time. This was the main reason that forced the shift from China Model I to China Model II in the 1990s. When deflation in 1997–2002 threatened to destabilize the country

As Marcel Proust said “The voyage of discovery is not in seeking in new landscapes but in having new eyes.”

Take the oft-quoted ‘fact’ that the world has met its Millennium Development Goal (MDG) in water some three years before the target date. (The MDG stipulates that the number of people in the world who do not have access to safe water should be reduced by half between 1990 and 2015.)

collective action is one of the most cited subjects in the social sciences.

collective action is one of the most important and ubiquitous subjects in the social sciences with significant implications for a large number of public policy and governance issues